Cop falsely arrested man, then lied on paperwork, but DA hasn’t done anything about it

An NYPD officer falsely arrested a black financial planner on pick pocketing charges then lied in a complaint about what a witness said, but the Manhattan District Attorney hasn’t taken action, records show.

Officer Xavier Gonzalez, who was promoted to detective in Dec. 2017 and is assigned to the Brooklyn Special Victims division, does not appear to have faced disciplinary action or charges for the false arrest. The NYPD declined to comment.

Gonzalez handcuffed investment adviser Darrell Williams, then 58, at the 125th St. and Lexington Ave. subway station on June 10, 2016, and accused him of picking the pockets of an undercover cop and a straphanger on a northbound 4 train, according to the criminal complaint. Gonzalez was working undercover on the train.

Williams, on his way to meet a client, was dressed in a suit with a briefcase in one hand and his phone in the other.

Gonzalez, who joined the NYPD in 2010, claimed in arrest documents that paint shop clerk Anthony Osei, who was on the train, had said Williams stole his phone. But Osei told The News that was false. He said he had also told cops and prosecutors it wasn’t true.

When Williams sued the city and NYPD over the arrest, Osei swore in an affidavit, seen by The News, that Gonzalez had never spoken to him and that the statement attributed to him was false. “I defended him (Williams) because it was the right thing to do,” Osei said.

“A cop came up to me and said, ‘Did he take your phone?’ I said, ‘No, I have my phones and wallet.’ Two weeks later, I get a call from the prosecutor. I told them the same thing.”

“The evidence is overwhelming that Gonzalez simply fabricated the allegations against my client, Darryl Williams, near the end of Gonzalez’s tour of duty so that Gonzalez could earn overtime,” said Williams’ lawyer Joel Berger. Gonzalez was paid $35,871.41 in OT in 2018 and $31,185.54 in OT in 2017, above his $94,000 annual salary.

A process called “arrest overtime” kicks in when an arrest is made near the end of an officer’s shift. It is coveted given overtime drives up an officer’s annual salary, and subsequently his or her pension.

Williams was working for the Sanitation Department and had private clients when he was arrested. His financial license was suspended for two months and he was scrutinized by Sanitation, where he had worked for more than two decades. He said he spent $1,500 on a lawyer, and the charges were dismissed after two months.

Entries mentioning his arrest remain in a financial industry database called BrokerCheck. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said criminal charges must be disclosed to FINRA and ultimately appear in BrokerCheck. It said there are procedures for removing charges from a broker’s record and that it was looking into Williams’ case.

Once the case was thrown out and sealed, Williams filed the lawsuit, which the city settled for $100,000. He says the experience has left him anxious around police and he won’t ride the subway unless his wife is with him.

“I have no trust in cops anymore,” said Williams, 60, now retired. “He’s putting perfectly innocent people in handcuffs. People who don’t have the resources I have, they could go to jail for something they didn’t do.”

His wife Anita, 60, has been an NYPD civilian employee for 34 years. She recalled he was so anxious at an awards ceremony for her at 1 Police Plaza that he had to leave early.

“It was ridiculous and it caused a lot of pain,” she said. “It dragged on for so long. I want to know what they are going to do about the officer. I think it was about making overtime and that my husband was profiled.”

When the DA moved for dismissal, prosecutor Daniel Makofsky said the case could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, a hearing transcript shows.

“If you can’t get the DA to indict on these facts, what’s it going to take?” Berger said. “They covered it up. The DA’s office admits they never kept any notes about their conversation with Osei. All they do is dismiss the case, but they make no record of why.”

Berger said Gonzalez’s partner, Officer Ronald Cobilich, actually questioned Osei. and that Cobilich said under oath that Osei had not implicated Williams in a crime. In a deposition Gonzalez admitted that he had not spoken to Osei on the platform before the arrest, even though his criminal complaint said he had. Cobilich did not respond to a request for comment.

“This case vividly demonstrates the failure of the city’s prosecutors to do anything about police lying,” Berger said.

He wrote three letters to the DA’s office asking for an investigation of the case. Copies of the letters were seen by The News. Berger said the DA’s office interviewed Williams and Osei after the letters but has not acted. The District Attorney’s office declined comment.

Postal worker Leonard Kelley, 66, also claimed in a lawsuit that he was falsely arrested by Gonzalez. Kelley, who had a 40-year career with the Postal Service, was going home from an all-night shift and Gonzalez arrested him at Union Station in 2015 for jostling, or bumping up against another person like a pickpocket might.

Kelley told The News he felt ”humiliated” because he was paraded through the station in handcuffs. “I just thought I was being singled out for no reason,” he said. “There was no reason for me to be arrested. I’m a homeowner. I’m a law abiding citizen. But he was hell bent on doing what he did. I’m a black male and I felt like I was being profiled.”

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